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Machete
Character poster
Directed by	Robert Rodriguez Ethan Maniquis
Produced by	Robert Rodriguez Aaron Kaufman Iliana Nikolic Rick Schwartz Quentin Tarantino
Written by	Robert Rodriguez
Starring	Danny Trejo Cheech Marin Lindsay Lohan Robert De Niro Jessica Alba Don Johnson Michelle Rodriguez Steven Seagal
Studio	Troublemaker Studios Hyde Park Entertainment Overnight Productions
Distributed by	20th Century Fox[1]
Release date(s)	2010
Country	United States
Language	English Spanish
Budget	$20 million[1]

Machete is an upcoming 2010 action film by Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis. It is an expansion of a fake trailer Rodriguez directed for the 2007 film Grindhouse. It will star Danny Trejo in his first lead role as the title character. The film also stars Jeff Fahey, Jessica Alba, Lindsay Lohan, Cheech Marin, Rose McGowan, Michelle Rodriguez, Steven Seagal and Robert DeNiro. This film will be Steven Seagal's first worldwide theatrical release since Half Past Dead in 2002 and Lindsay Lohan's since I Know Who Killed Me in 2007.

Plot

Machete is a renegade former "Mexican Federale". He roams the cities, towns, and streets of Texas looking for work after a shakedown from a drug lord called Torrez. Machete has a run-in with Benz, a local businessman and spin doctor, who tells Machete that McLaughlin, a corrupt senator, is sending hundreds of illegal immigrants out of the country and that he must be killed. Benz offers Machete $150,000 to kill McLaughlin who quickly accepts the murder contract. Attempting to assassinate the senator at a political rally, Machete is double-crossed and is shot in the shoulder by Benz's henchmen whom are soon revealed to be in league with Senator McLaughlin who orchestrated the entire attempted assassination with Benz as part of a false flag operation to gain widespread public support for McLaughlin's harsh anti-immigration laws by setting up Machete as the patsy to make it appear that an outlaw illegal Mexican immigrant tried to assassinate the senator. Now on the run from the law and being tracked by Sartana, a persistant U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent with a special interest in the blade slinger, Machete goes after Benz and his men, as well as Senator McLaughlin, with the help of his "holy" Federale-turned-priest brother Padre, a saucy meat cleaver-wielding taco slinger named Luz, and April, a socialite with a penchant for guns. Machete rallies a group of illegal migrants together, and begins to hunt the people who double crossed him.^[2]

Cast

• Danny Trejo as Machete, a renegade and dangerous former Mexican Federale and labor worker who gets hired for a job to assassinate a corrupt senator, but is later betrayed and goes out for revenge against his former boss^[3]
• Cheech Marin as Padre Benito del Toro, Machete's "holy" brother; a former Federale-turned-Catholic priest that helps him^[3]
• Lindsay Lohan as April Benz, Benz's daughter, a socialite with a penchant for guns^[2]
• Robert De Niro as Senator McLaughlin, the corrupt Senator ^[2]
• Jessica Alba as Sartana, a U.S. immigration customs enforcement agent who is tracking Machete down
• Don Johnson as Lt. Stillman, Sartana's superior
• Rose McGowan as Cherry Darling, Will appear in the fake trailer at the beginning of the movie
• Michelle Rodriguez as Luz, a saucy taco slinger and Machete's friend
• Steven Seagal as Torrez, a drug lord ^[4]
• Jeff Fahey as Michael Benz, a businessman and Machete's boss who hires him for the assassination^[3]
• Elise Avellan and Electra Avellan as The Sexy Nurses at the hospital where Machete is treated^[5]
• Cheryl Chin as Torrez Henchwoman, a cold blooded killer and Torrez's right hand woman sent to look for Machete^[6]
• Tom Savini as Deputy Tolo^[7]
• Daryl Sabara as Julio
• Carlos Gallardo
• Tito Larriva
• Alicia Rachel Marek as June Benz, socialite wife of Benz and April's mother^[6]

Production

At South by Southwest in March 2007, Rodriguez announced that he would be expanding his trailer for Machete into a feature-length film.^[8]

According to Rodriguez, the origins of the film go back to Desperado. He says, "When I met Danny, I said, 'This guy should be like the Mexican Jean-Claude Van Damme or Charles Bronson, putting out a movie every year and his name should be Machete.' So I decided to do that way back when, never got around to it until finally now. So now, of course, I want to keep going and do a feature."^[9] In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Rodriguez said that he wrote the screenplay back in 1993 when he cast Trejo in Desperado. "So I wrote him this idea of a federale from Mexico who gets hired to do hatchet jobs in the U.S. I had heard sometimes FBI or DEA have a really tough job that they don't want to get their own agents killed on, they'll hire an agent from Mexico to come do the job for $25,000. I thought, 'That's Machete. He would come and do a really dangerous job for a lot of money to him but for everyone else over here it's peanuts.' But I never got around to making it."^[10]

During Comic-Con International 2008, he took the time to speak about Machete, including such topics as the film's status, possible sequels, and production priorities.^[11] It was also revealed that he has regularly pulled sequences from it for his other productions including Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

On August 27, 2009, Rodriguez filmed a pseudo political rally at the Capitol building in Austin, Texas.^[12]

Trejo also plays a character by the name of "Machete" in Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids films. It is unclear whether the two characters are the same.^[13]

References

External links

• Machete at the Internet Movie Database
• Machete at Allmovie